Page 29 of Roadrunner

I hadn’t known, cutting that cake, that the coat closet was only the first of what would be ten years of rooms like it.

Martina’s word was atonement. I turned it over and couldn’t make it fit. Not after ten years, not as a single accounting settled all at once in a hospital hallway. If there was a ledger being balanced tonight, I didn’t think this was it.

I thought about calling my parents. I got as far as pulling my phone out and scrolling to my mother’s name before I put it away again. They were in Geneva, or Singapore, or wherever the calendar currently had them. I already knew how the call would go: my mother’s voice going carefully soft the way it always did when she was performing concern rather than feeling it, a promise to have my father call when he landed, a follow-up that would arrive two days later as a fruit basket instead of a phone call. I didn’t have the strength that night to be disappointed in real time. I put the phone back in my bag and let Martina be the only family in the room, because she was the only one who had ever actually shown up.

A nurse found us not long after. No improvement to report, nothing new, only the promise that someone would update me the moment there was. It was enough to know the waiting had a shape to it now. Hours, not minutes. And that Martina wasn’t going anywhere in the meantime.

“You should go home and rest,” I said. “I’ll call you.”

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

Alex

Then

It had been a year since our first kiss. Riley called it our anniversary. I didn’t argue, especially when the celebration involved gifts and a home-cooked meal at his mother’s table. We ate with his family every Sunday now. This one felt different, though. A year used to feel like a sentence. Now it felt like proof I had not imagined the rock.

“The chicken’s incredible,” I said between bites. “Better than last time, even.”

“She could make this seven days a week and I wouldn’t complain once,” Antonio said.

It was my favorite of everything Della made. I suspected she used it, at least partly, to nudge Riley and me toward something more permanent. That wasn’t a decision either of us seemed in a hurry to make.

Della smiled, pleased with herself. “Thank you, dear.”

“If you’re celebrating a year,” Addy said, grinning, “does that mean there’s a wedding coming?”

Riley nearly choked on his food. “Excuse me?”

“A wedding. When’s it happening?”

He looked around the table, meeting each set of eyes in turn. “We’re. In. No. Rush. We don’t owe anyone an explanation. Alex is still in college. When she’s done, we’ll figure out what comes next.”

“What options are there?” Della asked, genuinely confused.

“I don’t know. When the time comes, we’ll decide.”

“We’re in no rush,” I added, hoping to smooth things over. “Everything’s good the way it is.”

Della made a face at her rice. “It’s ridiculous, if you ask me. I’d like grandchildren before I’m dead.”

“You’re not dying anytime soon,” Riley said.

“Nobody knows that for certain.”

He set his fork down. “Every time we sit down together, we’re under attack. Can we just eat?”

“Why fix what isn’t broken?” Antonio said, gesturing at us with his coffee cup. “They seem fine to me.”

“Hush.” Della gave him a look. “You’re not helping.”

I loved this.

The noise of it, the way affection in this family came dressed as argument. I could have kept coming back on Sundays for years without a ring changing anything.

Riley finished eating, got up, and disappeared into the kitchen. When I glanced through the doorway he was watching me with an expression I recognized. I excused myself and followed.

Since Christmas, something between us had shifted. It had been building for a year. Every casual kiss now carried more weight than it used to, every quiet evening ending somewhere neither of us used to let it end. I suspected everyone at that table could feel it too. It occurred to me, walking my dishes to the sink, that it might be exactly what had prompted all the talk of grandchildren.